Aw-Aw-Tam Indian Nights: Being the Myths and Legends of the Pimas of Arizona

by J. Wm. Lloyd; Comalk-Hawk-Kih

And the little boy went on to another doctor, who said: “Why do you come to me? Are you lost? If so, we will take you home.” But the little boy said to him: “No, I am not lost, but I want you to tell me one thing—why the Apaches are so dangerous—are they like the har-sen, the giant cactus, with so many thorns?” And the doctor answered: “No, they are men like we are, and have thoughts as we have, and eat as we do, and there is only one thing that makes them dangerous and that is their bows and their arrows of cane.”

So the little boy went to the next doctor, and this doctor also asked him if he were lost, and he said: “No, but I want you to tell me just one thing—why the Apaches are so dangerous. Are they like the mirl-hawk, the cane-cactus, with so many branches all covered with thorns?” And the doctor replied: “No, they are human beings just as we are, and think just as we do, and eat as we do, and the only things that make them dangerous are their bows and their arrows of cane.” And the little boy said: “I am satisfied.”

But he went yet to another doctor and asked him also why the Apaches were so dangerous, were they like the hah-nem, the cholla cactus? But the doctor said no, and gave the same answer as the others had done, and the little boy said: “I am satisfied, then,” and went back to his uncle again and began to question him about what people did when they got ready for war, and what they did to purify themselves afterward, and his uncle said: “It is now late at night, and I want you to go home, and tomorrow come to me, and I will tell you about these things.”

So the little boy went home, but very early in the morning, before sunrise, he was again at his uncle’s house, and came in to him before he was yet up. And his uncle said: “I will now tell you, but we must go outside and not talk in here before other people.”

And he took the little boy outside, and they stood there facing the east, waiting for the sun to rise, with the little boy on the right of his uncle. And when the sun began to rise the doctor stretched out his left hand and caught a sunbeam, and closed his hand on it, but when he opened his hand there was nothing there; and then he used his right hand and caught a sunbeam but when he opened his hand there was nothing there; and he tried again with his left hand, and there was nothing, but when he tried the second time with his right hand, when he opened it, there was a lock of Apache’s hair in his hand.

And he took this and put it in the little boy’s breast, and rubbed it in there till it all disappeared, having entered into the little boy’s body.

And then he told the little boy to get him a small piece of oapot or cat-claw tree, but no, he said, I will go myself; and he went and got a little piece of the oapot, and tied a strip of cloth around the boy’s head, and stuck the little piece of wood in it, and then told him to go home to his mother and tell her to give him a new dish to eat from.

And this stick which the doctor had put into the boy’s hair represented the kuess-kote or scratching stick which the Pimas and Papagoes used after killing Apaches, during the purification time; and the doctor had made it from cat-claw wood because the cat-claw catches everybody that comes near, and he wanted the boy to have great power to capture his enemies.

And his uncle told the boy to stay at home in the day time, lying still and not going anywhere, but at night to come to him again. “And before you come again,” he said, “I will make you something and have it ready for you.”

And the little boy kept still all that day, but at night he went to his uncle again, and his uncle had four pipes ready for him, made from pieces of cane, and he said, “Now tonight when the people gather here (for it was the custom for many people to come to the doctor’s house in the evening) they will talk and have a good time, but after they are thru I will roll a coal from the fire toward you, and then you light one of the pipes and smoke four whiffs, and after that slide the watch-kee, the pipe, along the ground toward me, as is the custom, and I will smoke it four times and pass it to my next neighbor, and he will do the same, and so the pipe will go all around and come back to you. And even when it is out, when it comes back to you, you are to take it and stick the end that was lighted in the ground.